| Home in Seville |
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Anna and Martin had furniture made to their specifications before they left England, and in Seville, Martin supervised the construction of their home. The main part of the house was built to giant scale with 14 foot ceilings and eight and a half foot high doors, which were also extra wide. The back part of the house was built to average-size person specifications for servants and guests.
 When the house was complete, Anna and Martin threw a housewarming party. The Reverend Ashley from the Baptist Church gave them a large family Bible, which is still in the Swan family today. After years of being uncomfortable almost everywhere he went, Martin enjoyed seeing his guests dwarfed by the grand size of everything in their new home. The women at the party would not sit down because it was too undignified to climb or be lifted up onto the furniture. Near the Bates property, James Craven, one of Barnum’s old employees, had a farm where he kept a small menagerie and trained animals for the circus. He sent any surplus animals to the Bates’, which meant that they often had some unusual creatures around the house. This is probably where Anna got her pet monkey, Buttons. Buttons liked to make a game of throwing items from around the house at the hired help. The employees teased each other about who would be fed to the boa constrictor for not working hard enough. Anna would make the farm hands wash and put on dress clothes before they sat down at the dinner table to eat dinner. This was an annoyance to them, but Anna always cooked plenty of good food and none of them were ever known to go away hungry.
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